can vulnerable to the accusation and hitch would never be vulnerable to this accusation of being lentin, of being a bit pinched and crabbed. and we did disagree about that. but as salomon says, we had violent arguments about trotski and lenin, et cetera. but i never had a slightest wob nell my friendship with hitch. it was -- >> the god thing, i think in different ways one could have a different position to christopher on that. i mean i used to feel that religion is a private matter, was not my business. you know, that if there were people who found sustenance or moral strength or whatever it might be from religious observance, then it wasn't for me to tell them not to. you know. and christopher's view was more absolutist than that and was, as his subtitle of his book, religion poisons everything. and that you can't make that private public distinction as he argues in the book because the trouble with those private beliefs is that people use them to justify attacks on actual individuals, you know, in the public sphere. so you could have that disagreement with christopher without it affe